Uganda continues to lose 53 billion Shillings annually in salaries to workers who are either non-existent, dead, retired, or absconded from duty.
This is according to a special audit of the government salary payroll undertaken by the Office of the Auditor General. The special audit was presented on Tuesday to the Speaker of Parliament Anita Among alongside the general audit report for the financial year ending June 30, 2023.
According to Auditor General, John Muwanga, his office undertook the special audit of the salary payroll and validation of government employees in February 2023 on a total of 367 entities, comprising 162 Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), 176 Local Governments, and 29 other government organizations.
The report shows that out of 367 entities, only 265 Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) and Local Governments process their payrolls through the Ministry of Public Service while 102 MDAs utilize other payroll systems different from the Integrated Personnel and Payroll System (IPPS) utilized by the Ministry.
Edward Akol, the Assistant Auditor General in charge of Audit says that a total of 358,753 employees who appeared for the validation exercise presented all the pre-requisite documents and were fully verified and confirmed by the respective Accounting Officers. A total of 25,439 were partially verified after failing to present all the requisite documents but were recommended to be temporarily left on payroll until the responsible appointing Authority verified them.
Akol also says that 7,744 individuals whose names were not on the base payroll of February 2023 appeared for the validation exercise presented all pre-requisite documents and were recommended to be included on the validated payroll.
During the exercise, Akol says that they found that 2,067 employees who were paid 22.4 billion Shillings annually, appeared for validation but did not satisfy the requirements and that these were recommended to be omitted from the validated payrolls.
The audit also indicates that 6,307 employees were paid 23.6 billion Shillings irregularly after they were confirmed to be either dead, absconded, or retired at the time of validation. Akol added that 1,818 individuals who were paid 56 million Shillings in February alone were nonexistent.
The speaker of Parliament Anita Among tasked the new Leader of Opposition Joel Ssenyonyi to task the accountability committees to quickly scrutinize and report back to the House within six months.